Sacred Wall

While I was at the Stillwater Farm this past week I took a few shots of a wall that had been tacked on the side of the barn many years ago. Over the years, weather and fire have taken its toll on the wall. What remains is one of the most interesting collections of textures and colors found on the farm. It is one of those places that I have seen many times, but never really stopped to think about how cool looking it really is. Unfortunately, the good stuff is higher than I can reach, but with a loaned tripod I think I can shoot it without too much trouble. I like this area because it reminds me of a simpler time. When I visit this farm, even though it is right next to a major road it feels quieter. I can relax there (even though there have been many stressful deadlines faced there) and now I feel that I can explore it freely. I think this will be a fun place to explore photographically. I should be able to get permission to go inside soon which I am really excited to share with everyone. Anyways, these shots are from that outside wall with the bottom photo showing the entire wall. The way I'm thinking right now about my semester project is to try to take a lot of pictures of this barn (since it is easily accessible) and incorporate some junkyard pictures with them to show how the "Yankee" structures of days gone by have stood up to time. Hopefully I will have more pictures uploaded by the end of the weekend!

Stillwater Farm

I spent some time this week at one of my favorite places in Sterling. The Stillwater Farm goes back to 1790 and over my 21 years I have visited it a lot. It is protected by the state, but it unfortunately does not get the funding needed to restore it - only the money needed to keep it from collapsing. Time has left its mark on the barn and house and I find it really interesting to see how the structures age. This photo is of one of the windows on the front of the barn and shows some of that age. The cracking wood trim, cobwebs, and peeling paint all tell a story about the life of this building. One of the ideas I have for the semester long project I have to do for my photography class is to document and show the details of the numerous barns of New England. In a way I feel this fits into my other idea of photographing small private junkyards and old cars since both fit into the old Yankee mentality of holding onto things in case they are needed later or because of being too lazy to get rid of them in the first place. There are plenty of barns to photograph in the area that are in varying degrees of decay so that may be one direction to go in.

New Semester!

Seems like a long time since I've been on here, but its actually only been a month. Over Christmas break I honestly didn't do a lot of shooting. Part of that is due to the fact that there wasn't a lot of time because of shopping and Christmas parties. I did get some pictures of Christmas with my family, but that's where my exciting story begins (sarcasm implied). Starting on Christmas day my BRAND NEW D90 gave me error messages that wouldn't allow me to shoot. Thinking it was a fluke I removed the battery and kept shooting. A few days after New Year's though I went to Boston (very cold day) and the camera completely froze up and gave me error messages saying I had a f-stop of F90 (wouldn't that be nice). Anyways I sent it back to Nikon after reading about some isolated but similar problems online. I will be waiting impatiently...

In addition, my parents bought me a SDHC memory card and I discovered last week while trying to import those pictures that my card reader is out of date and cannot read that card. Time for a new reader too!

Anyways, sorry for the rant. This is a new semester and I'm taking another Digital Photo class with Frank so more pictures will be posted throughout the semester. I cannot wait to get started on this class because it is all project based. I plan to continue on my junkyard/old car route and see where it takes me. More to come very soon!